Review of Godzilla (1998) by Allan C — 13 May 2016

Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich followed up their huge success with "Independence Day" with this weak American remake/reboot of Godzilla. The film starts out promising, with scientist Matthew Broderick being scooped up by the government to help them investigate the effects of radiation on what is likely a new monstrous creature.

The cast is solid, with Jean Reno, Maria Pitillo, Hank Azaria, Kevin Dunn, Michael Lerner, Harry Shearer, Vicki Lewis, Nancy Cartwright, Richard Gant, and my favorite 80s/90s stuntman Al Leong and you even have Gretchen Mol in an uncredited role as a reporter.

However, the film is a real slog at nearly two and a half hours. When this film came out, it was a direct attempt to show up "Jurassic Park" with an even bigger dinosaur creature and took the same serious tone.

I think where Devlin and Emmerich went wrong is that they forgot the playful tone they brought to the action and adventure they had in their previous films like "Stargate" and "Independence Day.

" Emmerich is a solid action director, but he's no Spielberg. Maybe if this film was edited down to a tight 90 minutes, it may have worked better.